I couldn’t believe it, but Lariel looked a little afraid of Sethian now.
I was definitely missing something big here. I opened my mouth to question them both about it, but Sethian must have seen me frowning at Lariel because he gave me a look and shook his head almost imperceptibly as he stood behind her. Right. We would discuss it later. For now, I just wanted to make sure that she really was all right after the ordeal she had endured because of me. The details could wait.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I could have walked, you know,” I said pointedly as Sethian set me down gently at the edge of the largest bathing pool.
“It does not mean you should,” he said in all seriousness.
I sighed, but conceded the point. He would probably be over-protective of me for a good long while and knowing how stubborn he could get, it was just easier to let him have his way. Besides, I thought with a wry smile, it wasn’t like being pampered was any kind of hardship.
I lifted my nightgown over my head, tossing it carelessly over to the side, and slipped down into the gloriously hot water while Sethian removed his clothes. I sat down on the underwater bench and just leaned back against the pool’s wall with my eyes closed, allowing the warmth of the water to begin soaking the weariness from my body. I was surprised at how quickly visiting with my friends and the children had tired me out, but then there had been many tears involved. The emotional toll no doubt had doubly weighed down on a soul so recently drained as mine.
Soon, the water sloshed beside me as Sethian lowered himself down next to me. I opened my eyes and scooted myself into his lap without any urging on his part. My days of being shy were long past me.
“Do you want to tell me why everyone is suddenly treating you like you’ve become the big, bad monster?” I asked as Sethian began to caress my body with a soapy sponge.
“Your ladies are just a bit unnerved at the moment,” he replied quite matter-of-factly.
“It’s not just them,” I insisted. “The healers were even more jumpy every time you got near to one of them.”
I felt him nod his head behind me. “They are unnerved for the same reason. When you opened yourself so completely to me and our souls merged more perfectly than they ever had before, you inadvertently unlocked a latent power within me, something that has never been seen among my people. I have caught you scrutinizing my face more than once since you awakened. You can sense something is different but cannot quite pinpoint what exactly has changed, correct?”
“Yes, and I’ve been so annoyed because I couldn’t figure it out.”
“I am now completely connected to the natural energies of the whole realm. That is the difference you sense when you look at me even though what you see is not what others have seen when they look upon me now.”
I really hated it when he explained things so vaguely. It was a bad habit of his.
“What do you mean?”
“When I am with you, your soul acts like a buffer, tempering the power that now perpetually flows into and is absorbed by my body from the natural energy streams around me. I shine quite brightly now without the presence of your soul, as brilliantly as the sun when it is high in a clear sky, I am told. It can be rather troublesome—for everyone.”
I looked back at him. “Rather than temper it, it just sounds like my soul is a contaminate,” I said with a laugh, “like it’s getting in the way of the purity of your essence or something.”
The sour look Sethian directed at me had me laughing even harder. However, my chuckles soon turned into a startled moan when I felt him reach between my legs and firmly press his fingers against my clit, rubbing in a slow, circular motion. He pressed his lips against mine and greedily swallowed my moans as I tried not to squirm too much. I knew I was still a little too weak for the more vigorous and sometimes wild sex we often enjoyed, and I didn’t want to accidentally drive him into a needy frenzy.
Even so, I could feel his rapidly hardening member begin to poke into my lower back. Knowing that I would not have the energy to prolong this, I started to turn in his lap so that I could mount him more easily, but he immediately moved the hand that had been cupping and caressing one of my breasts down to my hip to stop the movement.
Sethian pulled away from the kiss and moved his lips to the crook of my neck. “Stay as you are,” he murmured huskily against my skin. “This time I shall do all the work. Just relax and enjoy and let me feel your warm and your life pulsing around me. I need to feel that you are here with me right now, that you really have come back to me.”
Hearing such melancholy words had my throat instantly tightening with emotion so that I was only able to nod in answer. He bit at my neck gently before I felt his lips stretch into a smile against my skin.
He resumed his gentle but vigorous fondling of the hot button between my legs while continuing to slowly kiss, lick and suck a red path from my neck to my shoulder. This slower pace made sudden actions like the pinching of my nipples or the insertion of a couple of fingers into my moist passage much more potent, and soon he had me moaning and writhing on his lap with blissful abandon as his fingers massaged me into my first orgasm.
Despite his desire for me to just sit back and enjoy, I couldn’t help thrusting myself up and down on his fingers as I rode out those pleasurable spasms.
“Please Sethian,” I begged breathlessly, “I need to feel your cock inside me.”
He needed no further persuasion as he pulled his fingers from within me and gently grabbed my hips to lift me up and onto the cock that was bobbing eagerly in the water. I reached a hand down and wrapped it around his member to help guide it into my passage. I moaned as the head rubbed across the shallow, sensitive spot that Sethian loved to drive me wild with. Then he was buried up into me to the hilt and he once again stilled my hips when I tried to raise myself to begin grinding myself down onto that thick cock.
“Let me,” he whispered again into my ear, making me shiver.
I leaned back against his chest and tilted my head back and to the side to give his lips and especially those teeth better access to my neck. Knowing what I wanted, Sethian began to slowly nip at my neck with quick, shallow bites while starting a slow, upward thrust deep into my recesses. Once he had established a rhythm, his hands moved from my waist to cup both of my breasts, squeezing and fondling them with greater aggression as my fingers clutched at his thighs in time to his thrusts.
Then one of his hands dropped back down to my groin and began aggressively rubbing my clit again until the pressure became too much and I exploded for the second time with a cry. Sethian continued to thrust up into me even as I rode out the waves of my orgasm, but by the increasing urgency of his thrusts, and the rising excitement that began to flood my being, he was now teetering on the edge of his own ecstasy. I deliberately clamped down on his member with the muscles of my passage, and with a startled gasp and a final bite to my shoulder, I felt his warmth begin to release within me. I rocked my hips against him as he came, loving the feel was his cock jerking within me.
Sethian pulled my face towards him with a hand beneath my chin and kissed me slowly and passionately, his tongue lazily sliding against mine as if trying to mesmerize its contours. Making love with Sethian was always earth-shattering, but I could kiss him forever. There was just something about the way he moved his lips and tongue that was not only pleasurable, but also comforting and sexy, making me feel wanted and powerful like nothing else.
Sitting here, surrounded by the warmth of the water and Sethian, himself, after triumphing over so much darkness, with my four beautiful children and three best friends who would do anything to protect us waiting for us back in the royal suite, I realized with a start that I had actually managed to achieve my Happily Ever After. My only regret was that I would never have the opportunity to let my best friend, Anna, back in the human world know that I was alive and well, living within this, my own personal fairy tale.
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Also by Cristina Rayne
Urban and Epic Fantasy, writing as C.G. Garcia:
The Supreme Moment (A Fractured Multiverse Novel)
Old Souls (Book 1)
The Ties that Bind the Soul (Old Souls Book 2)
UK CA AU DE FR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cristina Rayne lives in West Texas with her crazy cat and about a dozen bookcases full of fantasy worlds and steamy romances. She has a degree in Computer Science which totally qualifies her to write romances. As Fantasy is her first love, she feels if she can inject a little love into the fantastical, along with a few steamy scenes, then all the better. Claimed by the Elven King is her debut serialized Fantasy Erotic Romance novel.
Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four Page 11
